


The Finer Points

by Symmet



Series: X-mern thrngs [1]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Both of them, Charles is very depressed, Erik is paranoid, M/M, Warning: Suicidal contemplation, a lil, aint that just the way, also paranoid erik, au divergence, but really they're afraid of the idea, except neither of them are either sweet nor poor, its got the feel of unrequited love, or they might not, poor confused erik, so much, sweet tortured Charles, things might get better, tiniest bit of unreliable narrator - that being a drunk drugged Charles, u know how it go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2635766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symmet/pseuds/Symmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is not in prison - he's out there in the world, thinking of his once friend. Charles is trapped in his own head, trying to forget. When perpendicular paths meet. One shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Finer Points

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a collection of different little studies/one shots that eventually lead to the creation of something longer. Just to point it out, Charles is a manic drunk using the drug to repress his powers, just as he was at the beginning of DOFP. Erik, of course, has no idea. The AUish bit is that Erik is not in prison. He's being Erik.

* * *

 

How many times would these wounds open up? How many times would it take until they became numb, became unable to be forgiven or forgotten, marks forever driven into his brain and into his heart?

How long would it take? And was it better or worse knowing that he and Erik were only ever brought together by war, and so it was that only in the event that humans truly did try to tame or destroy them that they could work together.

That if anyone was ever going to have to change it would be him.

Not Erik.

Never Erik.

And that here and now, refusing to take Erik's stance, to do what he was doing, was it worse, knowing that unless Charles gave in, they would never be what he wanted them to be?

That he was sacrificing it for the greater _good_?

* * *

Whatever it was that Erik felt for Charles, it was not love.

Companionship, yes, and that was already something more to him for the few friends he'd ever had.

But love?

Charles knew in the broken way he had to know, that Erik wasn't entirely able to experience love.

It begged a certain amount of vulnerability, of submittance, that he did not think Erik could give.

_Did not know if he could survive thinking otherwise._

And it ultimately demanded trust, something Erik might have been hard pressed to give even then, that Charles knew he, himself, could never give now.

Not to Erik.

Never to Erik.

Because Charles didn't want to break again. Could still feel the fractures in himself when he thought of Erik.

There were too many dependent on him not losing himself to the same kind of action.

There was too much at stake to ever let Erik so completely destroy him again.

* * *

In the end, Charles did not know what was felt between them.

Charles wanted to hate Erik, did, for a time, but in the end, always just _wanted_ to hate him.

Or at least not love him so much.

Hope was a terrible thing, and he needed it but couldn't get rid of it in regards to Erik.

No matter what Erik did, Charles couldn't stop it from making a place inside his chest, settling like thick sludge.

He knew Erik was a monster. Even Erik probably knew that he was a monster.

But it seethed down there, constant, telling him that Erik could be more.

Could change.

He knew Erik couldn't, truly knew it in a way even Erik didn't.

Because Erik didn't _want_ to change. And it would have been hard enough, already.

But Erik didn't think he needed to change.

So it was that the hope did nothing but make him ache.

In the silence, when he thought of Erik, never acted any differently, never let it show, it was quiet and insistent and insufferable.

The hope had no purpose but to cause him pain when he watched Erik or saw what Erik had left behind or caused.

Nothing else.

It did nothing else but twist in his gut and curl it's claws into his heart and pull.

And the only way to stop it was to stop hoping altogether.

To let go of everything and give up completely.

So he did.

He had let go, when he'd let go of his gifts in favor of his legs, as if he could pretend nothing had happened because he'd break otherwise.

* * *

And the gift he had was the most terrible gift of all.

He had the “gift” to carry others' burdens, others' pain, without breaking, or so it had seemed.

He did have that gift.

But it was more than that.

He had the ability to _understand_.

Even if he didn't want to, the power remained.

And to understand someone is to give up on hating them.

You cannot hate what you understand. Because understanding is acceptance.

Hatred is born from pain but also mystery, the incomprehensibleness of cruelty, of destruction, of action, or choice.

And so it was that no matter how flawed Erik was, how horrible, how _terrible_ , no matter how Charles knew he was wrong, he understood him.

And that was the worst.

Trying in vain to hate. To hate even a little.

Not the pain, which could masquerade as hate, not the anger, which masqueraded even better, into the fist meeting a jaw or the hurt, tested glare.

And so when Charles had vowed to never go into Erik's mind again, it was already too late.

But it was to save himself, because fully entrenching himself in it was _wrong_ , feeling those thoughts twist up inside his own mind, feeling true but knowing that Erik's perception was skewed, was wrong, so wrong, and Charles never wanted to believe as Erik believed.

He never wanted to see the world like that again.

* * *

Erik realized.

Charles was something he'd never had, not for a long time.

Safety.

It was confusing, a delusion he was sure, but subtle and easy in a way that he only recognized long after it's influence was gone.

Charles made him feel safe.

He _never_ felt safe.

He wasn't even sure he trusted Charles - he didn't trust anyone, perhaps not even himself, not when there were those who could so easily as could Charles, bend his mind and will with thought alone.

Those nights, anchored somewhere doubting himself for no other reason than that someone else could be influencing his thoughts, those were confused. But of course, it wasn't entirely Charles' style.

Even so he coveted the helmet, and it was so strange when he thought of it, almost laughable, almost pathetic.

He armed himself against the invasion of his mind, not his body. The helmet protected his memories and thoughts. The fact that Charles could not use him physically was just an extra spoil.

And the truth was simple.

Charles was like a drug, and it made Erik confused, a torpor he had no intention of abetting.

Around Charles, he felt safe, though nothing but his presence had changed, and that was treacherous, not to be believed. When Charles was in his mind, he was glue, hot metal pouring into the crevasses and broken pieces and changing to fit Erik’s needs, holding Erik together.

It felt complete.

Right.

And Erik didn't want to want it as much as he did, knew that he couldn't trust himself not to bend to it, still not entirely sure that Charles wasn't manipulating him still, that Charles hadn’t left that bit of ache inside of Erik.

But he knew Charles wouldn't.

Except did he?

Or was that something else planted in his head?

It was complete paranoia, but would Charles have left room for paranoia if he were this good?

If anything, Erik had faith in Charles' abilities.

In the end, he wanted Charles to have made him feel like _this_ , because it was easier to face than the alternative.

That what he felt for Charles wasn't going to go away.

* * *

He wanted to retreat into the dark, because even if despair could find him there, it took longer to get to him.

Everything did.

He went there because the agony, the cacophony of _noise_ swirling inside his head was too much.

Because without proper stimulation, his mind had gone mad, in the way that makes a broken man give a small drunk laugh all alone in a room, surrounded by ghosts of the past.

 _Haunted_ by ghosts of the past.

And the headaches from a hangover were a thousand times preferable to the agony of everyone else's pain.

Because it was too much, too much.

Sometimes Charles wondered what would happen if he were to kill himself.

In the end, he wondered if Erik would have cared.

Then it grew dark in his mind, angry at himself for caring whether Erik would have cared, and drew himself away from the suicidal thoughts, through some childish accident.

He was lost in the dark, but so was the truth, and that way, it was harder for it to find him, wake him up, gasping, late at night, drenched in sweat and the smell of alcohol.

* * *

It was one of these mornings that the two lines, perpendicular, so completely and utterly opposed, finally met.

Charles’ mind has proved masochistically cruel. In desperation, he had administered the drug to gain his legs but also to dampen his mind. To skewer the nightmares it plagued him with, crowding his thoughts with those not his own, all screaming and clamoring and dragging their nails into his brain.

But even when the minds around him were silenced, he was hunted by nightmares. As it became clear that his mutation had to be further incapacitated to return more ability to his legs, he quickly administered higher dosages of the drug.

Because the memories of Erik’s betrayal were seared into his mind by the burning path of a single coin. He couldn’t forget it. He’d get headaches, suddenly and sporadically, but they weren’t really headaches - his mind was remembering the feeling of metal churning through his cerebral cortex, it was remembering death. Not really his memories, but he had been in that mind as it had died, and had fully experienced it as if his own.

But with the drug and copious amounts of alcohol running through his system, no memory could freshly wind itself through his mind, barbed wire on tired, fragile flesh. That was how he preferred to spend his days. That was how he fought his own mind off.

But with such an unstable strategy, he dealt with the multiple drawbacks - a short temper, walking around in a dazed stupor, throwing up, blacking out, and his favorite, waking up with icy silver pounding in his veins and a panic attack bordering on his conscious as he came back to himself.

 _Not real_ , he remembered after a moment, reassuring himself by wiggling his toes,  _It was just a dream_.

Of course it was real, it was a twisted memory of what had happened, of feeling numbness creep up his body, watching Erik walk away. A nightmare of truth.

Before the drug, he’d suffered extreme panic attacks after he awoke to find himself indeed paralyzed from the waist down. Hank had found himself very much tending a trauma patient and Charles was lucky that he was still willing to endure such awful company.

He sat there, fingers wound in the sheets, watching his toes just barely shift the sheets at the end of the bed, waiting for his heart to stop ringing in his head like another incessant mind. In it’s own way, being without others' thoughts had seemed more blissful in theory than in practice - he was left to his own grim, dark self, with nothing to buffer it.

But anything was better than before.

He took a few couple shaky breathes when he recognized that it was over, knees suddenly like clockwork drawing up to cushion his forehead as he wrapped his arms around them, trying to refuse the tears.

He hadn’t quite managed that, yet.

His head felt like lead, his body felt shaky and sweaty, and the stale air of alcohol clung to him more heavily than the sheets. He sobbed silently, never noticing that his window was wide open, curtains billowing out in the warm night. He never left the windows open anymore, as if he was afraid errant thoughts would wander in with the fresh air, see his vacant mind and harbor there like a festering bacteria.

A small sigh escaped him finally and he uncurled to sprawl back on the bed unrestrained. He stared up at the ceiling, wishing not for the first time, that he was anyone else. Any _thing_ else.

He scrubbed his face vigorously with stiff fingers, angry at his eyes for crying for someone who didn’t deserve it. Angry that he was wasting water on that when his body sorely needed it to deal with the alcohol being sweated out of his system. Angry that he had alcohol in his system in the first place. Angry that before the day was done, he would have it back in his system again.

His gaze flickered nonchalantly to the side and that was when he saw _**him**_. Watching from the shadows.

He startled, instantly sitting up again, breathless. _No no no no no_

The drug was leaving his system, _that_ was why he was so shaky. _That_ was why he was hallucinating again.

Voice hoarse, he immediately picked up the little personal two way radio transceiver, the other end belonging to Hank. “Hank,” He muttered into the speaker, eyes on the figure slowly approaching, “I would be very thankful if you sent more up immediately. It seems I’m running low.”

The voice, despite the distorting crackle, emerged from the other end cautious and concerned, “Professor the dose you took last time was more than enough to last you a couple more hours at the least, I don’t think-“

Charles cut him off impatiently, “Yes, I would normally agree except I’m _seeing things_ -“ His voice cracked on ‘ _things_ ’ because they both knew exactly who “ _things_ ” referred to. If he was lucky, it was Raven, but what were they kidding? Luck was not something Charles felt he could reasonably boast of these days.

Nevertheless, Hank persisted, “It’s not safe, Charles. unless you’re willing to cut down on your alcohol consumption for today?” He added hopefully.

Charles stared at the receiver in blank shock then made a disgusted noise and switched it off, dropping it on the floor and flopping over so he could ignore Erik.

Erik apparently did not know what to do with that, stopping short somewhere by the edge of the bed.

Charles waited, head pressed gloriously into the soft folds of a pillow, counted in his head until -

“Charles?”

There it was. Not how his hallucination usually greeted him, but nonetheless effective.

That voice was pristine, deep as the fresh water rivers under the earth, dark as the channels they rushed through. It was supposed to be as cold as the ice that encased the mountains, but it wasn’t, it was warm, the bedrock that sheltered the water until it was ready to see the light of day.

Charles bit his lip and furiously and silently urged his eyes not to shed a _fucking goddamn tear_.

But it had been so long since he’d heard that voice. Or thought he’d heard that voice. But he stayed silent, fists clenching the fabric as if over his own mouth. Answering always ended painfully, and usually with Hank restraining him, somehow having turned blue and furry in the process.

The silence enveloped them, unkind and edgy.

“You… think I’m a **hallucination**?”

He was so _shocked_. It never played out like that, usually. Erik was always angry, goading, cruel, hateful. Even emotionless, sometimes. Not this. Not… hurting. But who was Charles to decide? His mind had concocted another way to twist in on itself. At least it had been a very long time since this had happened.

“Charles.”

He still refused to answer. To acknowledge. He’d learnt the hard way too many times what his mind was willing to do to itself once he gave in.

Silence reigns. Here, the halls are empty. Hank, far below, twiddling in the basement or with the plane or anything far away from Charles and his black moods. His mind is finally quiet except for his own thoughts.

He’d never stopped to think how awful that could be.

A weight slowly presses down on the mattress beside him, feeling so irrationally, unbelievably _real_. He ignores it, fingers curling into the fabric.

“What were you asking Hank to bring you?”

Charles tries to let it go, tries to push it away. But he’s remembering the first few weeks when he had blatantly accepted the arrival. He’d been going slowly mad anyways. What was wrong with some company? Up until he started blacking out to find Hank restraining him, he’s not sure he wouldn’t have continued it _or_ administered medication. Hank started implementing it in the drug, and that was that.

He had a good old time talking to himself, after all.

Without lifting his head he answers, muffled by the cloth, “The stuff that helps me to forget you.”

He was telling himself, berating himself. Was he growing an immunity to the drug? He felt he fervently felt one way or another about that, but he wasn’t sure what. As if he wouldn’t eventually give in, anyways.

Silence can be so deafening.

“And what about the alcohol?” Comes the next question, carefully.

“That’s so I can forget everything else.”

He has suddenly decided he feels cornered on the bed, so he has sprung up, slipping out of the sheets and padding over to stare at the window thrust open and letting sunlight (painful, headache-inducing sunlight) pour in. He shuts it quickly, gathering the curtains and pulling them in.

He has resisted every urge to look. He will continue this as long as he can.

“What about the walking?”

Charles cocks his head at the window latch, now closed, “The drug helps with that, too.” He says slowly.

Suddenly, Erik is right behind him, or perhaps Charles is not as aware as he used to be, doped up on drugs and alcohol, and there is a careful pressure on his arm. He is stumbling away, stung, trying to look anywhere else, because the brief glimpses are burning his eyes.

“Charles, I’m here, I’m real. I’m not a _damn_ hallucination.”

How that voice makes him ache, fresh, burning in his esophagus and head, gold in his ears, weighing him down.

Charles numbly stalks back to his bed and pulls the covers over his head, “Go away.” He says childishly.

He feels the covers torn off in a blinding instant of rushing air, revealing Erik, beautiful, monstrous Erik.

“Make me.” Erik says, evenly, even though his eyes just barely glitter with something new. Almost like fear.

“You know I can’t.” Charles says furiously, pretending the tears making him blink as he grabbed at the sheets feebly were from the bullying and not Erik being there. How much he wanted something he couldn’t name.

“Why, because I’m a ‘ _hallucination_ ’?” Erik snorted willfully, pulling them further out of reach.

“No,” Charles snarled, and now he knew the tears were very obvious, but apparently that was distracting enough to let him to dart forward, snatch the sheets and tug them back over himself. “Because I can’t fucking use my mutation, _Erik_.”

_You know why_

He couldn’t see Erik but he could almost feel him, standing there, a few feet away. _Deafening_ silence, too heavy for humans, mutated or not. The kind that pounds on your skull, or perhaps that was due in part to the headache. Finally Erik said, “Why can’t you…”

“Because of the goddamn drug is why. That’s half the fucking point. So I can fucking go to sl -what the fuck is with all of the stupid questions?” Charles hissed at his general directions, hoping to hide the tears in his voice.

It failed. For the second time, the blankets were pulled from his grasp. Erik sought his eyes, but he didn’t want to give the hallucination the satisfaction of watching him break so easily, so he stared down at his hands in his lap.

_As if he wasn’t already broken._

Erik sat on the edge of the bed. Softly he whispered, “Why would you do that to yourself, Charles.”

Charles closed his eyes, biting his cheeks as if that would keep the tears from falling, twisting his head away. “Charles-“

He felt something soft caress his cheek and then saw white. He thrashed, violent in one sudden, desperate moment, and all he knows is _that was not okay_ and that Erik was shoved onto the floor by an errant kick.

“ _Don’t._ ” He gasps out, over and over, “ _Don’t_.” His hands wind themselves up to his eye sockets, palms pressing into the wet trying to stop it, trying to spark black spots in his vision, reset his hallucinations. He sobs, once, curling in on himself, “Leave me alone.” He begs softly.

He is vaguely aware that Erik gets up. He doesn’t know what he expects, but he is exhausted, emotionally and physically, suddenly drained. His diet of alcohol and lack of sleep had not contributed positively to that particular situation.

It is silent again for a moment. Then, Erik speaks softly.

“I came because I wanted to ask you something, but it’s become very clear to me that I was… I was wrong. I was being paranoid. You’re in no state to…”

It wavers and tapers off into shocked silence. Finally, it rushes out, “Jesus, Charles.”

Charles gives a wet laugh at that. Taking deep breathes, still refusing to look.

But Erik wants him to look, and Charles feels something cool and firm curl around his wrists, force them from his face. Not flesh. Not Erik physically, because he seems to have realized that Charles will not permit that, weak and human as he is right now. He is at the edge of the bed, kneeling, looking up at him, bending metal because Charles cannot handle being touched.

“What have you done to yourself?” He asks mournfully.

Charles’ lip curls, “Only everything you haven’t.”

Almost imperceptibly, Erik flinches. It is not a muscle contraction that is any stronger than a blink, but for Erik it is a dramatic stagger backward.

Erik searches his eyes, looking perhaps, for something of the Charles he used to know. But that Charles was discarded on a sandy beach, unable to move on his own, abandoned, trying to remember how to breath after a coin had been imbedded in his skull.

Erik made sure of that.

And he seems to come to the same conclusion.

“I’m really here, you know.” He says softly, velvet rubbing the wrong way on the air, too warm for Charles to think about.

The metal hangs from his wrists inanimate. Charles looks away.

He’s about to say something - what, he’s not sure, but as he opens his mouth, he is overcome with dizziness, and keels over. Erik, ever ready, catches him half on reflex.

The drug is leaving his system. If his stomach wasn’t empty he would be sure he’d need to vomit. He already feels the shakes coming on, the spasms in his muscles as his genetic code re-erects itself and his spine starts becoming decrepit and useless below the waist again.

These hands wrapped so gently around him. They were the same that guided a coin into his skull, a bullet to his spine. An emotionless surgery to his heart.

He doesn’t fight the touch this time. He sags, as if the weight of Erik is suddenly accepted, and Erik gently lets him slide off the bed until he’s half lying on Erik, half on the floor, wrapped in sheets.

“Running out of the drug.” He says, faintly. He feels Erik stiffen beneath him, slight fear at the fact that Charles might be back to full power. “If I’m not hallucinating you I’m going to be devastated when I wake up.” He added honestly, his eyelids already drooping closed.

“Then don’t fall asleep.” Erik begged him softly.

Charles forces his eyes to flicker open at that, makes a weak attempt to sit up more. The lead bracelets on his wrists feel like they weigh a ton. Like Erik on his heart, _Erik_ , destroying everything about himself as an individual, the life he’d had, the sister he’d loved, the future he’d long dreamed of. Ruined it all. And yet they were here. The finer points never mattered. Just the one where the perpendicular lines met.

“I love you.” He says thoughtfully. “And sometimes I wish more than anything I could hate you.”

And then he fainted.

* * *

When he woke up, he was in the bed, swathed in the sheets he’d so possessively tried to keep. It was to Hank pulling out a syringe and an open window, with the curtains pinned in place. There were two large, old nails wrapped around his wrists, with the points bent into themselves to prevent injury. Hank, perhaps too invested in not accidentally giving Charles too much, had his attention squarely on the syringe in his hands, and had not noticed.

When Hank positioned his arm to inject him, he put up a weak hand. Hank looked up in surprise.

Unsure, feeling the strange stickiness around his eyes where tears had dried, Charles murmured, “Let’s see… let’s see how I do without it for a day.”

Hank raised his eyebrows but offered no comment, putting it away. In recent months he’d become more and more conceded with Charles’ increasing dependency on the drug. He put it away, giving Charles a strange look as he did.

“This doesn’t have to do with this morning, does it? Are you still seeing… anything?”

Charles’ gaze flicked to meet his, previously watching the sky outside the window. “No, I’m not still seeing anything.” He returned to watching the hills as he felt feeling drain completely from his toes. Something icy settled in his stomach, and he resisted the immediate urge to tell Hank that he had changed his mind.

Hank turned to follow his gaze. “Oh.” He said suddenly, straightening, “Do you want me to close -“

“No.” Charles said quickly, almost sharply, “I like them. It’s fine.”

Hank turned to regard him silently, and they both remembered the numerous times Charles had complained about the open windows. Finally, he gathered up his things, picked up the receiver from the floor and with a look, deposited it on the nightstand, and bid adieu to go play with whatever he was tinkering with at the moment. Charles felt a pang of guilt for not knowing. He should know, shouldn’t he?

As Hank was leaving, telling him to call if anything came up, he said evenly, “Thank you, Hank.”

Hank paused at the doorway, before nodding, “Of course, Professor.”

 _How to cause mutation in plants_ , Charles noted with a small nugget of satisfaction. The thoughts were trickling in. This time he would control them.

“Good luck with your Sunflower sample!” He called out weakly after Hank left.

He watched the clouds outside, trying to forget the memories of how to run. The memories of a soft touch that could bend metal. Tried not to mourn.

Failed.


End file.
